Please pardon our appearance

...while I recover from the weekend in NJ & PA.

I love you, Philly. Thanks for being so kind & funny.

NaPoWriMo poems for yesterday & today to come.

Bay-Area peoples,

Tomorrow, you should go see Danielle & Laura & Geraldine & Clay & all the poetry at Pegasus that is 10% for the entire month of April.

I'll be in Philly with Conrad.

Today I am escaping the urban pastoral of the borrowed blooms through my back window & heading for some more accessible outdoors in the wilds of New Jersey. The tug of the two mes: city me, uncity me. Please uncity me. Or at least a different city. I know a decade of threatening to leave. But I couldn't even hack the crowd last night at the Ashbery reading. Flight response led to bufala mozz/broiled eggplant/pesto/prosciutto homemade pizzas, however. Smack.

Ways to offer poems:

As gifts
As proofs


I prefer gifts


First, all actions are poems
& people who make poems are poems
& poems are poems

Yes, to do with relationships
Intended audience
One's "intended"

Including oneself in the audience
of a gift poem transforms
one into a beloved

Or
   including oneself in the audience
of a proof poem transforms
one into a combatant

Or
   one is required
to identify with the author
in choosing up sides


Poems make lame clubs
Lament our baby seals
so flaccidly bludgeoned


(This is not my poem for today)

Free on Sunday

A mini chap of a single poem, in a limited edition of 50, in celebration of this reading in Philadelphia.

Last night

David Shapiro not telling anecdotes.

Star Black loosed a line about "Freilicher skies."

Bob Holman exploded Girls on the Run, warning he "didn't get Helen Vendler's approval to do this."

Deborah Landau read "Ignorance of the Law Is No Excuse" & then her own terrific "Human Frailties," a cut-up of Berlitz French for Tourists.

Pawel Marcinkiewicz: "I come from Poland to tell you we admire John Ashbery's poetry very much. And to prove it, I will now read 'Title Search.'"

Honor Moore was "honored to be here" & read "The Problem of Anxiety."

Ron Padgett read "Two Scenes" (after losing out to Ann Lauterbach over "A Blessing in Disguise") & then his own poem "Dead or Alive in Belgium":

Somebody you thought was dead is alive.
Somebody you thought was alive is dead.
Sometimes it's a happy surprise.

James Tate read "My Philosophy of Life," delighting the whole company.

David Shapiro:

"Kenneth Koch said to me that he was jealous even of John's dreams."

"Howard Nemerov asked me once 'But can you memorize his poems?' After walking halfway around the lake, I got it."

[& after a half-dozen other similar miniature anecdotes:]

"Yes, I've memorized pretty much everthing John's ever said to me. But I was asked not to tell anecdotes tonight, so I won't."

Then he read "How to Continue."

He totally stole the show.

I've got more notes & lots more pics. Maybe later. Gotta get back over there.

Ashbery festival begins today...

Here are the details/schedule for the festival at the New School (scroll down a bit) & the Bowery Poetry Club (see Saturday, April 8).

All festival events & readings are free.

And yesterday the New York City Council declared Friday, April 7th JOHN ASHBERY DAY.

THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS

CITY HALL
NEW YORK, NY 10007
Contact: Anthony Hogrebe

***MEDIA ADVISORY***

City Hall * At tomorrow's Stated Council Meeting, Speaker Christine C. Quinn will be honoring John Ashbery, one of America's most distinguished poets, with an official proclamation. The proclamation recognizes Ashbery for his literary and cultural contributions, and designates April 7th as "John Ashbery Day" in New York City.

Ashbery has won nearly every major American award for his poetry, including the Pulitzer, the Bollingen, and the National Book Award. A New York City resident for four decades, Ashbery is one of the original members of the celebrated New York school of poets, which flourished as a major avant-garde movement in the 1950s and '60s and which has many adherents and students today.

He has published more than 20 collections, beginning in 1953 with Turandot and Other Poems, and his work has been translated into more than twenty languages. He currently serves as the Charles P. Stevenson, Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College.

WHERE: Council Chambers, City Hall
WHEN: Wednesday, April 5, 2006
TIME: 1:00 PM

On the radio, whoa oh oh, on the radio

This morning at 10 CT/11 ET, you could catch me reading my poem "Miss Epistolary" was played on "Poetry Radio" on WGLT, the NPR affiliate outta Normal/Bloomington, if you were into that kind of thing. (I haven't heard it myself, but it was a real studio & a very sexy microphone, I gotta say.) Here is the website for more info.

(I can't figure out how to listen via iTunes, but I can get a stream to play via Windows Media Player on my Mac by clicking "WGLT Live" in that left sidebar, or you could try just clicking here.)

Update: What a cool little show! It's just a simple DJ into, a single poem, then a little outro over the beginning of the next jazz song. So smooth. Why can't every radio station do something like that? Anyway, they'll have a few more of my & Jen's poems, plus us reading Maureen Thorson, Shafer Hall, Ada Limon & Jason Schneiderman, coming up in subsequent months. I'll try to keep up with their schedule so I can post reminders.